jasonsamara

In honor of my bone head move last night I though some others would like to share a story on a stupid thing they have done with their Vette.

I will start it out with my story. I went to a dinner last night about 40 minutes from my house. Got the 60 out and before I got out of the neighborhood I realized the trunk was not shut. I stopped, put it in neutral, and the car drifted just a bit so I pulled the brake as I got out. Shut the trunk got in and forgot to take off the brake! I drove all the way there with the brake partailly on. After 15 minutes I could smell something but could not figure it out. When I got there I went to pull the brake and thought, "oh crap!" Well, there was some smoke coming out of the wheel wells for a bit, but everything seems to be ok and everything still works fine.

Karma must have got me. My neighbor and I are always pulling pranks on each other and he has spent the better part of 1 1/2 years building a 68 Firebird. Well he put a 572 in it, but the oil pan started leaking pretty good because of a bone head move on his part. He pulled the motor last week and spent all day yesterday putting it back in. When I got home from work he was running it to check for leaks. We went out back for a bit and then I left. On my way out I went through the garage and I thought I owe him one or two so I reached over on the shelf got some oil and put a tiny bit right under the bell housing. His wife (who was in on it) said he just about lost it last night when he saw that and started cussing and ranting. I'm sure you guys have better ones than these.

corvettekent

I'm sure that we all have driven with the parking brake on and I don't think you have anything to worry about.
The oil under the Firebird now that is a good one but you know he will get you back.

Roger Walling

This web site does not have enough space for everybody to reply.

Please be considerate of other users of the web. There are only so many billions and billions of bits to go around.

(Please limit your responses to your first 100 stupid acts.)

jasonsamara

I came home one day to my trash can 30 feet up in my tree. For that I spent half the night plugging plastic forks in his yard. I must have stuck 500 of those things in his yard. He sent the neighbors kid over a few weeks back asking if he could borrow one of my Vettes to take to the prom because he thought I would say yes. That is why I did the oil It's a lively neighborhood

66jack

Nothing boneheaded yet...but I pulled a prank on a friend...

There was a car show coming up at a golf course and I had some golf ball laying about...took one and put a grinder to it to flatten a spot on it...drilled a hole on the flat spot just deep enough to put the end of one of those suction cup things used to hold placards to the glass...

When he wasn't around, I stuck it to trunk of his 65 Chevelle.

The look on his face was priceless...

jkuzzy

A few months ago I wasn't watching what I was doing when I pulled into my garage and hit the brick to the right of the garage door causing a nice break in the fiberglass.

Revfan

Hooking up my dash harness... I recently pushed the heater resistor into the heater box trying to make the connection with the harness.

ugghhhh....

DansYellow66

Most of the really, really stupid things I've done were when I was 18 to 24 years old (frontal lobe still developing) but a few recent ones that I will now attribute to frontal lobe decay. Fortunately, none involved the Corvette but I have plenty of other follies to note:

- Changed oil in Mustang GT and didn't notice filter gasket remained on engine until starting it and a nice 180 deg fan spray of oil mist coated the engine bay and driveway with 4 qts of synthetic. Driveway still beads water when it rains.

- Worked for two weeks under the dash of my Cobra and purchased 3 trailer light relays (for rear, single bulb lights) trying to fix problems with rear brake lights and turn signals, swapped all bulbs around, tested everything imaginable (nearly) for continuity, ran voltage checks for every circuit, switch, etc. Finally glanced inside front wheel well and saw turn signal wire spade connector to front signal light hanging disconnected. It took 5 seconds to plug it back in and 2 hours to reassemble the car.

- Wife and I decided to head out to dinner at local Mexican resturant before happy hour ended - jumped in her Toyota Highlander, hit the garage door opener, started motor, put in reverse, backed out forgetting that we have the industries slowest garage door openers. Caught the rear hatch spoiler on the lower door panel brace and ripped it half way off and dinged lower door panel and knocked it off track. A new $300 OH door panel and $200 repainting of the spoiler to put everything back to before hand.

That's enough for now - too depressing.

dplotkin

After finishing the build of my 61 Plymouth super-stock and bringing it home for the first time I decided to glaze the beautiful black paint. I had bought a $45 bottle of 3M Imperial hand glaze from the body shop supplier.

Got it all done, and when it came time to put the car in its new garage for the first time I ran over the bottle of glaze which exploded under the car

The bottle neck was facing under the car...naturally, so that its entire contents was now coating the underside of my frame-off restoration and about to catch fire on the mufflers.

Still pissed about that & it was 7 years ago.

Dan

Low Rider

Put a fuel pump on my 58 Impala convertible .......that was out of gas

jasonsamara

My dad had just bought his new Chevy truck back in 2001. We had all finally grown up and my parents were empty nesters so he bought his first truck since 92. Plus it was his first Chevy. Well, the truck was just a week or 2 old and my mom took it on a trip. Coming back on the turnpike they were painting the lines and then it started to rain. She pulled in the drive and his nice new red truck had yellow all down the side and up in the wheel wells. He wanted to explode but he kept his cool because my mom would have bit his head off. The dealer was able to clean it all off for him so it ended well.

HAVNFUN64

Back in high school I built a big block tunnel ram 4 speed convertible 66 impala and had the hood off going to a car show. I stopped to pick up my girl friend ( now my wife of 26 years) and was backing out of her drive way and the steering wheel felt a little tight and I just pulled on it and it felt smooth again. I didn't think twice about it and pulled out and mashed the go pedel. Well I found what was wrong with the steering wheel! The plastic oil pressure line had hooked the flex joint on the steering column. Well the hood was off so instantly the windshield the was coverd with oil and oh yeah the top was down so my beautiful girl friend and I were also covered with oil along with my cloth interior. My motor had a high volume oil pump so with 5 seconds of go pedal mash I had shot over 4 quarts of oil out. The cool thing was my girl friend was more worried I had broke my motor than all the oil that was in her hair, on her face and on her new outfit! Needless to say I introduce her as my wife now. I have pictures, if I can find them I will post them you will laugh.

jasonsamara

Here is my best one wife related. Labor day weekend 2010 we went to the big cruise sat. night and took the Camaro and the Vette. Now I always spend that Sunday cleaning them up real nice for winter storage. I decided to clay bar my Camaro and wax it real good. Well about 3:30 my wife (8 1/2 months preg.) comes out and tells me we are gonna be late for a cook out. So I leave the Camaro with wax on 1/2 the car thinking no biggie I will clean it off Labor day morning and get them both back in the garage. So that night my wife goes into labor and we get the "go" bag and load up. I start the car and see the Camaro sitting there and I start thinking it will be days before I get a chance to clean it off. So I tell my wife, "give me 5 minutes" as I jump out of the car. I have never removed wax so fast in my life and my wife was not to happy but we laugh about it now

hedgehead

I was 19 I think, had an old 58 Biscayne, I had just put in a 327 and couldn't get it to start. Ebrake didn't work so I left it in gear while I fiddled around with wires, reached around through the window to try again, now it starts. Thru the fence and stops 10' from the neighbors pool. The car was OK but it took me a day to repair the damage.

ah53

A few years back I was working on my '53 Healey while it was on a lift with the bonnet (British Car) up. I was back a forth under the car and over the car. I finally decided I needed more room underneath and raised the lift never looking at the clearance between the aluminum bonnet and the ceiling. You can guess the rest. Oh yeah when my wife and I moved I made sure the new garage had a 15' ceiling.

woodsdesign

I was reassembling my 69 Vette after getting it painted. I didn't like the way the windshield wiper grill fit. It was low in the middle. So I took it off and decided to bend it over my knee. Snapped in half.

327carguy

It was 1974 and I had been married about two years. My wife and I had purchased a 1973 Vette but while my wife had attended college she had driven a 64 Corvette convertible and missed it. She found a 63 convertible in the classified. So we went to look at it. It was on its second or third engine transplant but I bought it for her anyway.

My first job was to repair, reroute or otherwise correct 11 years of COBB JOB wiring. The latest engine has the alternator on the driver's side and a mess of wiring extending the wiring to that side of the car.

I decided it would be an easy weekend job so I started early on Saturday morning rerouting the wiring in the driveway. A friend and neighbor stopped by in his new to him 70. After talking with him for about twenty minutes he asked "How's it run?" You know the rest, I started it to show him and the fan caught the mess of a wiring harness and ripped it out of the car.

This sign should read I was stupid.

DansYellow66

OK - since I see so many stories from when the writers were 17, 18, 19, etc years old - I'll go back into my trove of frontal lobe-deficient stupid tricks.

Decided I needed to set the idle speed on my 64 383 Torqueflite Plymouth in gear (think I read the idle speed specs were supposed to be while idling in drive). No problem - I set the inefficient parking brake, started the car, put it in drive and then leaned over the side of the driver fender with my feet straddling the front tire, while setting the idle speed and viewing my tach/dwell meter. Got it where it was just right and then absent mindely did what everyone does while tuning a car - grabed the throttle linkage and gave it a sharp wing to clear the motor. Motor went varooom, car nose shot up and then lurched forward rolling right over my left foot and came to a rest on the other side of it. Thanks to the rise of the nose and weight transfer I hardly felt it. I took a quick look around the parking lot to see if anyone saw my stupid trick and then shut the car off and went inside.

Almost as good was my buddy who wanted to raise the rear of his Olds Cutlass up to rake the body. Should be an easy thing to do with those handy, inexpensive shock absorber extenders we saw at the auto store. This resulted in a really hard ride and couple bent shock rods in short order. It also led to spending a little more money for a proper set of air shocks.

65 vette dude

When I was 17, I had a 57 vette. Living in South Florida, it rains nearly every afternoon, and into the night in the summer. Not having a garage, I had to park outside. Almost every morning, my foot wells had 3" of water in them. Easy fix, I drilled 6 holes in each foot well......problem solved. At the time, I didn't think a thing about it.........now, I can't believe I did that.

GILSWHO

I was fixing something i no longer remember on my new 84 back in 1987. The phone rang, put a screwdriver in my back pocket, answered the phone. When i returned, got in the car, and tore a 2" triangle tear in the seat. It is still there. I use it to remind me not to be a bonehead and take my time doing whatever task it is. "measure twice cut once"